


give 'em an ocean

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [37]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, Matt and Wade are high tension human beings, Mental Health Issues, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Triggers, distressing objects, moss balls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 04:39:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19783435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “No, Wade, that’s not its name,” Peter said. “That’s what it is. It’s a marimo. It’s an algae ball. They live at the bottom of a couple of lakes in Japan and Iceland. They’re super peaceful, so I thought you’d like one.”Oh.Right. Peaceful. That thing. Which Wade totally was.(Peter introduces Wade and Matt to moss balls. They have an adverse reaction.)





	give 'em an ocean

**Author's Note:**

> marimos = moss balls. 
> 
> if you don't know what they are, you can read about them here!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimo 
> 
> References to some pretty severe mental health triggers and behaviors, so please keep that in mind and do what you need to to keep yourselves safe.

Peter left--for the cat he claimed, definitely not for Wade--a little green blob in a jar by the keybowl.

Wade had resisted its charms for exactly fifteen seconds.

It wasn’t very big. Maybe a quarter of an inch across in all directions. It looked like someone had dropped a pompom into a lake and forgotten about it for a few weeks before scooping it back up and stuffing it into a small jam jar with a couple of pebbles.

He shook it up.

The ball bobbed around a little but didn’t disintegrate like Wade thought some thorough wave action might make it.

Interesting.

He offered it to the cat. She sniffed at it, gave the jar a lick, and then looked expectantly up at Wade like she was waiting for him to avenge her dead sister.

He looked back at her as though she’d killed his favorite aunt.

He planned on waiting until the blob formed a good healthy layer of scum at the top of its jar before throwing it out and using the jar for more useful purposes. Like for storing sugar. Or cocaine. Or you know, any number of questionable white substances.

But after week two, he came home from a surprisingly messy job and realized that the damn thing was resolutely not forming scum. Like, not even a little. It had sunk to the bottom of its glass prison though.

He picked up the jar and twisted it around a bit to squint at the green blob inside it. The glass turned a very pretty red and orange from the residual blood on his hands as he did.

“What _are_ you?” he asked it.

It didn’t answer.

One of the voices invented a voice for it which sounded a whole lot like Donald Duck.

The blob was _rude_.

So fucking rude.

So unbelievably rude.

Wade could not believe that the likes of Peter had had the nerve to bring this man into his house. Good fucking lord.

The blob needed grounding and its mouth washed out with soap. The blob needed reform school and twenty years probation.

The blob needed to pay its fucking rent. It had been here for three weeks already and was just taking up space, talking shit, and spitting all over the damn floor.

Rude ass motherfucker.

Comes in here and tells Wade how to live his life.

The blob had to go.

He gave the blob another week of probation to figure itself out. Because Wade had lived a whole lot of life, so he, more than anyone, knew that people deserve a second chance or two. Or three.

Peter told him, while he stood over the sink, slowly pouring out the blob’s water to show it how it felt to be standing on its last nerve, that he thought Wade was maybe having a bout of psychosis.

He was right. Wade was aware of it. He and the blob—right before their argument—had emailed his (their?) head doc with a subject line that read “HELP????A?SA??!?!?@E#W???”

He thought it would get the guy’s attention. The blob, the fucking wet blanket that it insisted on being, thought that Wade ought to go slam his hand in a door.

Which was rude.

Wade had already slammed his hand in a door. That was last night’s intrusive thought.

Peter asked him, while he reminisced on the door-slamming, when the doc was supposed to be contacting him and he couldn’t actually remember, and so the blob was saved from its harrowing torture for the time being.

Wade checked his email and Peter informed him that his phone had been ringing nonstop the entire time he’d been there.

Pete was a great kid who was very good at hearing things. Wade decided he needed a hug. The blob thought that he needed a good stabbing.

Wade decided that he wasn’t going to voice the blob’s thoughts anymore because they appeared to frighten the child.

The child handed him his phone with shaky hands, which was a sign of low blood sugar.

Wade had just the thing for low blood sugar.

Peanut butter.

Shit worked every time. And if it didn’t, well, you got to experience it twice.

“Wade,” Peter said in a funny voice, “Can you—can you just answer the phone?”

Phone? What phone?

Oh, right. That phone.

Yes, he’d answer the phone.

He answered the phone.

It was the doc! Amazing how he just seemed to _know_ when Wade’s head started to get whacky.

What’s up, Doc?

He got home three days later and sneered at the blob because this shit was all its fucking fault. If it had just paid its rent, none of this would have happened. Wade would have woken up, taken his meds, and gone to work like a normal person.

But no.

This whole home invasion situation was really throwing a wrench in Wade’s routine.

He tried to expel the blob from the house via the window but ran into a problem halfway through that.

Two problems, actually.

The first was the guy several stories down, screaming up at Wade for dumping blob-water on his head.

That wasn’t so much of a problem as a bonus.

The second problem was that when the water level hit the top of the little stick Peter had put in the blob’s jar to make it homey, Wade abruptly remembered that Peter had given him the blob as a gift.

He’d lied when he said it was for Bella. Wade’s fucked brain chemistry had been the one who’d taken that too literally.

He caught the blob at the very last possible second, before it tumbled to its blobby-death six stories down and panicked.

Holy shit, he’d almost killed the blob. Holy shit, he’d been trying to maim the blob.

Shit shit shit!

This is not how we treat gifts.

Peter told him, for what he claimed was the fourteenth time, that Thursday that the blob’s name was Marimo.

“No, Wade, that’s not its name,” Peter said. “That’s what it is. It’s a marimo. It’s an algae ball. They live at the bottom of a couple of lakes in Japan and Iceland. They’re super peaceful, so I thought you’d like one.”

Oh.

Right. Peaceful. That thing. Which Wade totally was.

On meds.

“Okay, so it’s a fish?” Wade said.

“No,” Peter emphasized. “It’s algae. Some people call them moss balls because they look like moss.”

Right. And algae was not the butter one.

“That’s ghee,” Peter said. “Algae’s the plant one.”

The scum.

“Yeah, sure. Pond scum, yes,” Peter said, getting exasperated.

Wade felt bad, really he did. But his head wasn’t fucking working at the minute, kiddo. His head did this sometimes. If he skipped the meds and then went back on them, things got all crazy and time happened all at once and Wade just forgot shit all the fucking time.

“It’s okay, Wade. It’s fine,” Peter said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take it back? It really seems to upset you.”

Upset? Who’s upset?

“You are,” Peter said. “No, really. Here, let me take it home for a bit. I’ll look after it for you and when you’re feeling better, I can bring it back.”

Yeah, sure. Okay. Whatever you want, kid.

The blob left the house. Didn’t pay its damn rent, but it left and the sanctity of the space was once again established.

What a relief.

Red brought Wade a gift in the form of a jar which looked _eerily_ familiar to Wade’s now-stable brain chemistry.

“What is this?” Red asked him, holding the blob up to where he thought Wade’s sightline was. “What _is_ this? Is it fish? Smells like fish. Is it fish?”

Had Peter given the trigger-blob to Red?

“It’s not fish,” he told the guy, “It’s scum.”

He got Red’s wide, empty stare for a long couple of seconds and then had to lunge to keep him from pitching the blob out the window.

“It’s peaceful!” he told the guy struggling in his grip.

Red made a series of unhappy noises which culminated in Wade prying the blob and its jar out of his grip and slapping it down on the counter. Red settled down a bit once it was out of his hands.

Wade stared down at him. Guy was panting.

Huh.

“I don’t want it,” Red said, wriggling away from Wade’s touch, but searching for his face. “I don’t want it, Wade. Why’s it like that?”

Wade had no idea. He got it. 100%, absolutely. Knew exactly what Red was talking about. But he could not, for the life of him, explain it.

“Maybe it’s cursed,” he told Red. “Maybe we’re doing it wrong.”

“How are we doing it wrong?” Red demanded. “It’s a fish.”

“It’s not a fish, pal.”

“It’s! A! Fish!”

“No, it’s scum. Listen when people are talking to you.”

“I don’t want fish! Or scum! Why did Peter give me scum?” Red asked, practically pleading.

A good question. A good question, indeed, Redthew.

“I don’t know, but it’s a gift,” Wade said. “So we can’t just chuck ‘em.”

Red’s eyebrows were veering into distressed territory.

“Here, no. None of that. Let’s do hugs,” Wade said.

“Don’t touch me, I’ll die,” Red mourned.

Okay, no hugs then.

Peter asked Wade if he was ready to have his blob back a few weeks later and the sudden, primal urge to scream drowned out everything else in his head.

“Wade? Wade? Is that…a no? You can say ‘no.’ I will not be offended if you don’t want it.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t want it.

It was just that it made him crazy. He’d just gotten his head back on straight. He couldn’t let the blob take that from him. He just couldn’t, Pete. You understand, right pal? Right, kiddo?

Peter gave him strange, cat-like wide eyes and nodded stiffly.

He promised that he wouldn’t ever bring the blob back into Wade’s home and the relief was almost too much to bear.

It was like finishing a marathon. Like water after five hours of clubbing.

He turned into a human noodle and had to slap himself against something hard and let himself go limp in the living room for a little bit.

He was so preoccupied with chasing that high that he didn’t hear Peter leave.

Peter informed him later that both he and Red had displayed a stunningly adverse reaction to what was, to pretty much every other human being on the planet, a soothing object.

Wade didn’t get it.

How the fuck was the blob soothing? All it did was speak evil and leave a slimy trail of disgust and confusion in its wake.

Peter tapped away at his phone for a couple of seconds and produced for Wade’s edification a video of a number of large blobs all floating around, chilling in the blue light of an aquarium.

And that was cool. That was fine. Wade could see how watching that kind of thing might be soothing to folks with a lot of stimulation going on in their heads.

Peter stared at him like he was slamming his own head against a chain-link fence.

Seemed like there was a hint of awe mixed in there somewhere.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Peter said. “Just saying, but, Matt filled his moss ball’s jar with holy water and hung it from the ceiling in front of a crucifix.”

Oh, now, Red.

The creativity.

The symbolism.

Good going, buddy.

“He thinks it’s a fish,” Wade said.

“I am aware,” Peter said in a tone which suggested to Wade that he, too, had run many circles with Red, having this conversation.

Silence fell between them.

“Maybe it’s a Jesus thing,” Wade said, just as Peter said, “So I’m gonna go.”

“Oh,” Wade said. “Okay.”

“Yeah,” Peter said with wrinkles in his forehead. “Yeah. I’ll see you next week.”

“For sure, buddy. Peace be with you,” Wade said, waving after the kid who was, wow, suddenly in a hurry to get back to the door.

“And you too, Wade,” the kid called over his shoulder, already out the door.

And then he was gone.

Huh.

Well. At least the blob was gone for good.


End file.
